Afro-Asiatic languages, also called Afrasian languages, formerly Hamito-Semitic, Semito-Hamitic, or Erythraean languages, languages of common origin found in the northern part of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and some islands and adjacent areas in Western Asia. About 250 Afro-Asiatic languages are spoken today by a total of approximately 250 million people. Numbers of speakers per language range from about 150 million, as in the case of Arabic, to only a few hundred, as in the case of some…